Galaga (1981)

I'll go ahead and say it: Galaga is a rip off of Space Invaders. It's the same objective, the same control system, etc. The real concern is whether that matters.

Oh, cool colors and no barriers! Look out guys! We've got a badass over here!!

The short answer is a resentful and factual no. Galaga is actually an improved version of Galaxian (1979) who is the real ripoff of Space Invaders. However, even Galaxian brought a new concept or two. Yes, it's the same formula of shoot the all the aliens in your ship limited to left and right movements. This continues until your either bored or you run out of your allotted three lives.
Awesome.

But what Galaga does different was honestly revolutionary. Namco, who saw the prowess of Space Invaders, had to bring something new to the table. With Galaxian and Galaga, they added something that had not been in many games at the time: COLOR. And not just overlays that gave the illusion of color, we're talking individual colors that would be displayed for the ship, each enemy faction, even the score counter. These games also added theme music for when no one was playing, much more engaging and exciting music for when you shot the bugs out of space with different and cooler sounds. This was immediately a reason for people to be attracted to these games.

Proven fact: flashing lights and music will attract/entrance 75% of the world population.

The Gala-games also had this new concept of not only the ships shooting at you (albeit in a fixed formation that wasn't closing in on you) but also breaking formation to try to either shoot you back or at the very least take you down with them in a suicide bombing run. It was this sort of madness that takes by surprise and keeps them more on their toes; this kept them more engaged than, say, ships with mechanically predictable movement slowly moving down. The random attacks from Galaga and Galaxian was a bit more interesting than the slow, imminent doom of Space Invaders.

On top of that, Galaga would improve on Galaxian simply because it could and wanted to. Gameplay was sped up by giving you the opportunity of shooting, *gasp*, two projectiles onscreen and the ships all moved a bit faster. Enemies would actually do a circle pattern upon reaching the bottom of the screen when on a fire run as a way to try and entrap you. There were more diverse enemies like the ones that would split into three smaller guys when destroyed or take two shots to destroy and come in close to try to catch your ship in a sort of tractor beam. The game kept track of the shots fired and how many were just you going gun crazy and how many you actually nailed someone. They even added this new thing called a "Bonus Round" where all you do is fire like crazy at enemies without consequence but for raking up some points. These changes were groundbreaking for the time and made the game fun because, again, it was more interesting to be surprised and preoccupied.

Of special note is a fairly intriguing concept brought thanks to Galaga involved the tractor beam enemies. If you got caught in their beam, they would steal you ship and hold it as collateral as you went to fetch another one. If you could manage to destroy the thief without harming the hostage ship, the other ship would combine with yours and allow you to have twice the firepower as well as let you take a free hit. Memory isn't one of my strong suits but I don't recall very many games that reward you for achieving payback on an enemy save for the Burnout games for example. In fact, it's actually a legitimate strategy to let yourself get captured specifically for the extra ship.

"When a Maaaan loves a Womaan..!!"

As technology improves and cool breakthrough games come, there are sure to be a couple of freeloaders and copycats. However, sometimes other people have improvements that are always invited and encouraged; I'll gladly forgive a title for being a knockoff if it can wow me in a way that the other one couldn't.


Final Judgment: 8/10